


What's a Little Pickpocketing Between Friends?

by Only_1_Truth



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cliffhangers, Gen, Guess who's on whose side?, Humor, Mission Fic, Pickpockets, Stealing, pre-relationship if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-10 00:44:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7823614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Only_1_Truth/pseuds/Only_1_Truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q's a rather good pickpocket.<br/>Bond's a rather dangerous target.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's a Little Pickpocketing Between Friends?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm technically still on hiatus while I try to get accustomed to graduate school! So enjoy this super-super-short ficlet! Un-betaed because I post so fast that my betas can't catch me...!

“This is a shitty plan.”

Alec’s voice drifted back down the comm-link with a certain level of amusement, “Tell that to the woman who makes the plans.  I dare you.”

Huffing, Q straightened out his little bowtie for at least the thousandth time and hefted a serving tray to balance it atop one hand.  He would have felt more comfortable holding it on both palms, but he needed at least one hand for other business.  

Through the crowded party of cocktail dresses and expensive suits, Q spotted Alec, sipping at a glass of champagne and blending in like a deadly coral snake amidst kingsnakes.  Before Q’s brain could drift (into the inevitable evolutionary debate about how one snake could continue to mimic another poisonous species that was now extinct in their region), Alec caught his eye, bared one incisor in a faint and dangerous smirk, and ever-so-barely tipped his head to the right.  The blond-haired man’s lips didn’t move, but Q heard through his self-designed earpiece nonetheless, “Your target is over there, by the redhead who’s about to fall out of her dress.”

There were a few of those, but Q was able to follow Alec’s eyes as he himself wove through the crowd.  He felt hors d'oeuvres being plucked off his plate as he went, and only kept track of how many so that he’d know when his prop was empty.  “I see them.  Green dress?”

“Not on your target, certainly.”

“Stop being an arse.”

Alec chuckled, low and rich, and if Q weren’t so focused on his task and keeping his cover, he’d have hurled his half-empty tray like a frisbee right at him, and damn the people in between.  Barely missing a beat, the older man retorted, “If _you_ stop being stroppy.”

“I’m not stroppy.  I’m nervous about the prospect of pickpocketing someone in the middle of a crowded room.”

“You’ll do fine, Q.  You’ve got the lightest fingers of anyone I know.”  At least Alec sounded a bit less teasing and more encouraging as he said this, the insincere praise getting some of the tension knotted between Q’s shoulder-blades to unclench.  His cinched waiter’s vest ceased to feel so suffocatingly tight, and he strode forward more smoothly.  “There you go,” crooned Alec, across the room but in his ear, eyes on him just like any good back-up was supposed to do.  “Now get in close and procure yourself a new wallet.  Our prize should be sewn into the lining, so you may as well take the whole thing.”

“ ‘May as well’,” Q parroted, scoffing and struggling to keep a straight face.  It had been decided pretty quickly that, of the two of them, Q was the least conspicuous, so he’d be the one doing the lift, but being inconspicuous and being invisible were two very different things, and Q was entirely too aware of his own tangibility as he got within range, sliding between people as smooth as he could.  “We’d better be ready to high-tail it as soon as I do this,” he stressed under his breath.  

“You’re the one with the car keys.”

That reminder was surprisingly encouraging.  “Standby,” Q breathed out to end the reassuring chatter, then checked that he still had a few - but not many - tidbits on his plate before circling around a rotund balding man and approaching his one target for the night.  James Bond, Q had been told his name was.  His dark-grey suit-jacket did something to bring out the arctic paleness of his blue eyes, and that black button-down (with an equally black silk tie that seemed to glint like a weapon itself) turned his short hair from a messy ash-blond to almost metallically gold-tinted.  It was a good look.  It absolutely did not distract Q from how dangerous the man under that suit was, because part of what made Q a good pickpocket was that he didn’t let himself get distracted.  

It was an old trick, but Q had whittled it down to an art: turning as if to offer his tray’s contents to another passing party-goer, Q walked straight into Bond with every appearance of it being an accident.  He immediately started going into apologies, fumbling his plate and hiding the movements of his hands with ease, although the deed was already done.  “Oh!  Oh, I am so sorry!  Sir, are you all right?  I didn’t mean to-”

Q had to hand it to the man: Bond had reflexes.  Although he hadn’t had time to brace for the impact, what with Q coming in purposefully from just outside the average person’s range of vision, Bond’s whole body had tensed up to the point where Q had felt it right through his suit.  One of the blue-eyed man’s hands even came up, and for a second, Q held his breath, feeling it lock around his upper arm.  

But after a blink or two, taking Q in and then glancing obligingly at his female companion - who was already saying predictable things about forgiving the clumsy help - Bond’s face relaxed and his body followed.  It was all over in seconds.  “Watch yourself next time,” Bond dismissed him, hand dropping, and Q allowed himself to breathe again as if the callused fingers had really been around his throat.  

It hadn’t been a hard bump; Q hadn’t even made a mess of his tray.  After all, he just needed a bit of ‘accidental’ contact, not a whole fiasco.  In fact, he’d hoped to just shoulder-check Bond, but the man had shifted his weight unexpectedly, and was also decidedly more solid than Q had anticipated.  As he walked off, portraying an embarrassed and chastised waiter with ease, Q slid a hand over his vest as if checking it for spills or stains.  Bond’s wallet was slim and compact, not even visible beneath the fitted material unless Q pressed his palm against it.  “Prize acquired,” he murmured for Alec’s benefit, and heard a rushing sigh in return, proof that Q’s partner had been a helluva lot more worried than he’d been letting on.  A glance orienting him, Q cut through the crowd towards where Alec was already moving to intercept.  They met up in seconds, a bit apart from the crowd.  Alec liberated one last morsel from Q’s tray while the bespectacled young man located a handy place to put it, now that the prop wasn’t needed.  

As Q’s free hand slid to his trouser-pocket, he froze, startled.  He patted his other pocket before looking up.  “Alec, give me the keys.”

Instead of grinning like a cat with its own personal canary, Trevelyan frowned, brows lowering over canny green eyes.  “I wasn’t yanking your chain when I said you had the keys, _kotyenok_.”

Considering that Q had an eidetic memory, and clearly remembered pocketing the keys to their getaway car, he was having a hard time arguing that point.  He frowned for just a second before it all hit him, and he swiveled to crane his neck and look back at the crowd.  

Bond was where he’d left him, still talking to that woman who was threatening public nudity in her green dress.  Still looking like a golden predator dressed up in a nice suit.  But, as if sensing Q’s eyes on him, the man lifted his nearest hand without turning, and idly swung a keyfob around one finger while presenting Q with a broadside view of a slow, wicked grin.  

“Shit,” Q exhaled.  

Alec, by this point, was staring, too, and seemed a bit stumped as to how to react.  He asked with the sharp beginnings of worry, “You _did_ get his wallet, right?”

Checking just to be sure, Q snapped back tartly, “Yes, I got his wallet.”  Deflating a bit, Q admitted with all the stiffness of a cat’s arched back after an unexpected wetting, “But it appears that he pickpocketed me back.”  For good measure, he added with more growl in his tone, “The bastard.”  There really was no forgiving this.  One simply didn’t pickpocket a fellow pickpocket, especially when the first pickpocket was really rather good, and hadn’t been warned that the other was _also_ a pickpocket.  

“Well, if it helps,” Alec said, “He doesn’t look all that mad about it.”

He certainly didn’t, which was something of a surprise: the man had just had his wallet stolen, but instead of raising the alarm, Bond was just carrying on as if nothing had happened, minus the way he kept innocently playing with Q’s keys.  “I hope you’re better at hotwiring cars than I apparently am at pickpocketing MI6 spies,” Q sighed, his ire finally crumbling in the face of a fair defeat.  

“What do you take me for, Q?  A child?  Of course I can hotwire a car,” Alec jovially replied, apparently dismissing this as a fortunate fluke just like Q reluctantly was.  It was safe to say that this was not the outcome that anyone had been expecting, but considering that this could have ended with Q getting knifed, it wasn’t all bad.  Turning towards the door, Alec risked their cover briefly to pat Q’s shoulder, saying when their eyes met, “And you’re not a bad pickpocket.  I wasn’t lying about the keys, and I wasn’t lying about your clever fingers.  Now, come on.  When fate drops good fortune in your lap, you don’t waste time.”  Turning and already walking away, Alec apparently couldn’t help but add offhandedly, “Fortune is an impatient lady, and if she’s in your lap, you’d better fuck her like a gentleman before her mood changes.”

That was finally able to get Q to stop staring at Bond and his Cheshire smile and instead turn to stare in stupefied shock at the retreating back of Trevelyan’s head.  “I can’t believe you just said that.”

“It’s an old adage.”

“No, it’s not.  I’m fairly certain that it’s the most ill-conceived metaphor that I’ve ever heard.”

“But it fits, doesn’t it?”

“You can’t use ‘fuck’ and ‘gentleman’ in the same sentence.”

With Q at his heels and the door opening up before them, Alec laughed lowly and challenged, “Oh, you still have _so_ much to learn, _krolik_.”

~^~

Of course, Alec had just straightened up from hotwiring the car when a shadow deeper than the rest of the night appeared at Q’s window, and a polite rap of knuckles had both men inside jumping.  Pale-blue eyes and a cold but charming smile greeted them through the window, as did the inviting jangle of purloined keys.  Alec already had his hand on his gun, but Q wasn’t armed, and Bond was on his side of the car.  The man wasn’t reaching for his own weapons, however, and in fact reached slowly with his free hand to button his jacket closed - a very purposeful motion that blocked access to the holsters that Q had just glimpsed there, and made both Alec and Q exchange perplexed and cautious looks.  

Bond was still standing, and waiting, and smiling that friendly-bullshark-smile.  He pressed the fingertips of one hand to Q’s window, the ambient heat of his skin creating little rings of fog against the autumn coldness of the glass.  He drummed his fingers, once, a polite sign of impatience.  

“I’d still like to point out that he doesn’t actually look mad,” Alec spoke hopefully, even if he didn’t move to get out.  

It was Q who gave in to the inevitable, reaching for the door handle.  As Bond retreated, Q hesitated to disengage the lock, but glanced over his shoulder to reply with all the dryness of a good martini, “And I’d like to point out that this is the last time we let Vesper dictate missions.”  He hit the unlock button and pushed the door open, shivering less from the cold that rushed in and more from the proximity of 007 awaiting him like a patient messenger of death on the other side of the door.  Still, Q had the gall to hiss unpleasantly, “Especially when it includes stealing from her ex-lovers.”

Q got out of the car to face the music.  Alec, growling in resigned frustration, palmed his gun and followed.  

~^~

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have no plans to continue this - I ended it where it was on purpose :) So don't ask for more. However, anyone is entirely free to imagine the possibilities, and even write continuances if they want. I've never minded people dabbling in my worlds... so long as they send me links (~u^) 
> 
> [Here](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/0f/88/b9/0f88b93de6c9099f80b36b2e0c7f3551.jpg) is a quick look at what Bond was wearing, if anyone needs a visual!
> 
>  
> 
> Now that I've been evil enough for one day, I'm off to see if I can post a chapter of 'Tinker'... *cheeky little wave goodbye*


End file.
